THE AMERICANS:  Tuesday 10PM on FX THE AMERICANS is inevitably one of those pieces of pop culture that feels more queasily topical these days (in this case, despite its 1980s setting), with its tale of Russian agents interacting with duped Americans and gaining top secret information for the good of the Motherland.  The show […]

  STILL STAR-CROSSED:  Monday 10PM on ABC – If Nothing Else Is On… The idea of a Shonda Rhimes-produced sequel to one of Shakespeare’s classics sounds like something that might air on a satirical network, but STILL STAR-CROSSED is real, albeit relegated by ABC to its summer minor leagues.  (The actual series creator/showrunner is Heather […]

RAY DONOVAN:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime Showtime has been having an awful summer, marked by the abject failure of I’m Dying Up Here and Twin Peaks, an 18-hour stunt that is filling the tiniest of niches.  (The soon-to-return Episodes and Dice have never been blockbusters either.)  For deliverance, the network is turning to its own Monarch of Moroseness, the […]

  DECEPTION:  Sunday 10PM on ABC – In the Queue For its newest trick, the House of Greg Berlanti presents a crime procedural so insubstantial it seems to disappear before your very eyes.  DECEPTION, created by Chris Fedak (co-creator of NBC’s vintage Chuck) mixes together tropes like a summer camp magic show:  the smug amateur […]

  There was never a real-life game of thrones behind the scenes at GAME OF THRONES, and perhaps there should have been.  After six brilliant years adapting George R. R. Martin’s novels to television, series creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss found themselves out of books and without a clear path to Martin’s ending.  (Reportedly, […]

  If NBC’s Thursday night sitcoms were a movie about college roommates, The Office would be the one who doesn’t study or do the work but still gets better grades than anyone else, 30 Rock would be the teacher’s pet, Community the stoner who’s either going to end up as a temp or a billionaire.  […]

  There’s a reason CBS is as successful as it is.  PERSON OF INTEREST is just a procedural–albeit one with an unusually complicated premise–but it mixes solid plotting, well-paced action and just enough character backstory to give it a little substance, and the result is an hour of television that works.   Person starts with […]

> The Tony Awards aren’t quite like any other televised awards show.  They’re happily, unapologetically insular (and so are the ratings–thank god for CBS, where “young” audience is a relative term), and there’s hardly ever anything like an upset; this year the closest was probably Mark Rylance winning Best Actor In a Play for Jerusalem […]